The sea ice prediction program of the Navy has been in a transition 

 stage with the Naval Weather Service (NWS) responsible for short- 

 range forecasts and NAVOCEANO continuing to provide some 

 longer range and specialized forecasts. Effective February 1973, the 

 15- and 30-day forecasts of the Alaskan and Eastern Arctic Regions 

 were considered operational, and responsibility for the provision of 

 forecasts was turned over to the Fleet Weather Facility at Suitland, 

 Md. These two organizations continue cooperation in accumulating 

 and using the basic data required for both programs. In 1973, NWS 

 ice observers compiled over 4,000 observer flight hours during about 

 350 fleet reconnaissance aircraft flight hours and about 720 hours on 

 board flights of which 650 were on NAVOCEANO arctic ice 

 observation (BIRDSEYE) aircraft and the remainder on Coast Guard 

 and other aircraft. In 1974 about 570 fleet reconnaissance aircraft 

 flight hours are planned and over 700 other hours are anticipated, 

 primarily during BIRDSEYE aircraft flights. Supplementing this 

 work are satellite data, ship data, and various programs relating to 

 vv{ind and sea surface conditions. Specialized NAVOCEANO ice 

 prediction services in FY '73 included a 90-day outlook prepared in 

 support of Eastern Arctic supply operations, ice forecasts in support 

 of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOLJ Polar Bear II operations, 

 ice forecasts for specific areas in the Beaufort, Chukchi and East 

 Greenland Seas, 90-day outlooks in support of Project Deep Freeze, 

 and ice forecasting support to submarine and in-ice transit in the 

 Arctic. During FY '74, a long-range ice forecasting manual will be 

 published for the Alaskan area and for the Ross Sea-McMurdo 

 Sound area. Four 90-day outlooks were turned over to Fleet Weather 

 Facility Suitland as of February 1974. A major technical report on a 

 numerical ice prediction system and an operational manual for that 

 system will be prepared during FY '74. 



The Navy has initiated a cooperative oceanographic observing 

 program in which equipment is provided to non-DOD ships, such as 

 those of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and civilian shipping 

 companies. These ships, selected because of their routes through 

 data-sparse areas, provide additional bathythermograph data, 

 which are used to update the ocean thermal data base. 



In FY '73, ten additional volumes in a series of detailed marine 

 climatic summaries extended the coverage of the coastal area series 

 to Southeast Asia, China, and the Philippines. 



Efforts to improve physical property forecasting during FY '73 

 included investigations of the relationship between long-range 

 sound propagation and thermal structure in the upper ocean, 

 investigations of shallow thermal structure and ocean frontal 

 features, and an evaluation of the relationship between radar sea 

 return and wave characteristics. In addition, a variety of specialized 



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